Brighid's Flame (6 page)

Paul, looking more straggled than ever, placed two cafeteria bowls of questionable quality on the plank table before them. “Breakfast stew.”

Tara tried to raise an eyebrow, but found she lacked the energy. “What's in it?”

Paul grinned. “Patented New York City hot dog. Potatoes and a little cheese. Whatever else in stock that needed eating before it went bad.”

So much for croissants and fresh fruit. Tara poked dubiously at a potato hunk with her plastic fork, shrugged, and started eating. It wasn't bad.

Paul sat across from them and turned as Gwen entered the train car. Tara's mentor nodded greeting and dumped a bundle on the ground wearily. Tara had never seen her look anything but fresh and put together. This morning, she looked nothing but weary.

“It's all taken care of,” she said, sitting next to Tara. “It wasn't easy, despite all the groundwork I've laid over the years. Bribes in the right places, etcetera.”

“You knew this would happen.” Tara tried not to sound accusatory, but the anger Gwen claimed to be something else was beginning to boil over, and Tara was too overwrought to hoist her emotional shields.

“I knew it was a distinct possibility, and I knew Julien. He would never patiently wait for Vincent to retire to gain power, and Vincent is too closely guarded to kill off.” Her smile was feral. “Julien is an intelligent man—certainly intelligent enough to fear me, and what I would make of you.” Her fierce expression softened as she tucked a strand of Tara's sleek hair behind her ear. “It was no good worrying you in case it never happened—and you needed to focus on your training. Now all our hard work will come to bear.”

Stephen leaned forward. “What's the plan?”

Paul answered. “The Refugee Train.”

Tara examined the idea from a strategic perspective, weighing advantages and flaws, before nodding her approval. There was no doubt in her mind it was risky, but probably their best shot. “We'll be hiding in plain sight.”

Gwen patted her bundle. “It will be a long journey. We can take you Underground as far as 49th and 7th, but you'll be above ground from there.”

Paul unfolded a dingy map on his table, weighing the corners down with books and odd bric-a-brac. A few drops of coffee escaped his cup, and he wiped them away with the side of his hand. By the look of the map, this was a common occurrence.

“You'll walk to Union Square,” he said, “changing outer clothing several times along the way. The Refugee Train will take you as far as Bowling Green.”

Tara followed the route he traced with his finger. “Why all the subterfuge? Julien has to know I'm coming, if what you say about Vincent is true.”

“Oh, he's on the hunt as we speak,” Gwen assured her. “But you have to confront him at Liberty Island, where everyone can see. We can't risk him taking you off the streets. In the best-case scenario, he'll continue to make it appear as though you're still on his side. His image with his supporters depends on me being replaced as well as Vincent. If you publically confront Julien, however, then the tide of the city will turn against him. Vincent and I will use all our resources make sure the city knows what Julien had done, and why.”

“You could beat him,” Tara pointed out. “You're probably one of the few people who could. Why risk my losing against him?”

Gwen shook her head. “It has to be you. Once this is all over, my…employment…with Vincent is at an end. My purpose will have been served, and I'll have to return home. You, however, will remain here, a member of this city where I never was. You are one of them, where I am not.”

“Once you reach Bowling Green,” Paul continued, “you'll have to walk again, to Battery Park. By now you'll be one of thousands, and not so easy to spot. From there, you'll take the ferry to Ellis Island to be ‘processed', and essentially disappear altogether. Really, you'll be snuck out the proverbial back door and taken via military transport to Liberty Island.” The teacher sat back, tired but satisfied. “The rest is up to you.”

“Remember,” Gwen said, handing them the bundle so they could change and prepare themselves. “It's not the winning or losing that matters. Only the fight, and how you handle it, does. Only then can you take this city back.”

Tara realized why the morning had been silent as well as cold when she stepped out of the train car in her newly acquired travel gear. The entire community had vacated the premises, leaving it with a palpable sadness. It felt abandoned, a ghost town lost to time.

“Where is everyone?” she asked, words ricocheting along brick and concrete.

“Left last night to take their places,” Paul answered. “You'll be looked after the entire way.”

Stephen shrugged into his backpack, struggling to slide the straps over the marshmallow sleeves of his parka. His breath came out in little puffs as he spoke. “How long will it take us to get there?”

Paul consulted the folded square of his coffee-stained map. “The Refugee Train is subject to fuel conservation laws, so it runs at less than twenty miles an hour these days—just to make the weekly trip, but it's better than walking the entire way. Between that and getting through various checkpoints, processing at Ellis Island…you're looking at about two days.”

Tara huffed a cloud into the air. Two days, and it was over either way. A black market stun gun lay snug against the small of her back, boot knives in place. Anything registered with the Dante network had to be left behind, of course, including Stephen's tablet.

But they had enough food and water to last three days, four if they were particularly careful. She was armed, and she had Stephen. For the first time in what felt like an eternity, she felt as though she were finally beginning to break through the surface of all that threatened to drown her. Stephen was right. They had managed the impossible together as little more than children. Surely they could manage this as well.

Paul returned their flashlights to them, then handed additional ones to the two guards who were to remain with the camp. “All right, everyone,” he said cheerfully. “Into the belly of the beast.”

Gwen went first, scouting ahead at a brisk jog. Paul gave her some time before striding confidently into the tunnels, the beam of his flashlight swinging back and forth. Tara and Stephen went next, while the guards brought up the rear.

Two days, Tara kept telling herself. Two days, and her troubles would finally be at an end.

One way or another.

Julien was going to kill her.

Not Tara, of course. That would be ridiculous, this soon in the game when there was still a significant chance he could persuade Tara to return to his side. The girl was ultimately loyal as a hunting hound, a tame hawk flown the homestead that would soon return to its master. After all, she's been raised and trained under the assumption she would eventually take Gwen's place, just as he had been brought up to believe he would take Vincent's. They'd known, without words being spoken, that they'd been meant for each other right from the start. The night he'd been shot had just been the next logical step on a well-planned road.

No, his ire was directed at Gwen. Only she could have shaken Vincent's confidence in him, shaken Tara's unquestioning loyalty. Only she could have made Tara and that brilliant milksop Stephen so irrevocably disappear.

Julien hated to have his routine interrupted, his neat plans derailed. In fact, he paid a lot of people a great deal of money to ensure his life ran smoothly. This was a hitch at a critical juncture he could ill afford. Tara had been a languid, melting armful in his possession, and now she was gone.

Tara was absolutely central to Julien's plans for the city. He'd assured his supporters in the government and among the city's elite who didn't share Vincent's vision that he could make of New York an empire to be carved between them like a Thanksgiving turkey—as long as it was Julien wielding the carving knife. Vincent, sentimental romantic that he was, seemed to sincerely believe the city belonged to is citizens.

At first glance, all was business as usual. He worked at his desk with the heavy drapes drawn shut against the cold steel winter beyond his windows, and tried to focus. Video conferences with potential allies and enemies alike, plans for revitalizing Fifth Avenue to its former prime, which would include the relocation of its current occupants. He would need to go on a hiring binge in the security department before long. The idea of his own personal army pleased him.

And all the while, he waited impatiently for word.

It finally came, interrupting a discussion via satellite feed about diverting funds from the Liberty restoration budget to the Fifth Avenue project. It wasn't going well—no one said so outright, but it was clear that as long as Vincent was still in charge, no one was willing to act against him.

“Gwen is no longer an issue,” he assured the four worried faces staring out at him from his video frame. “In fact, she is in the process of being resolved as we speak.”

The second, empty frame on his gentlemen's desk flickered to life as one of the faces mouthed empty platitudes. Julien interrupted him with an excuse and bowed out of the meeting.

“Agent Carson,” Julien greeted the man. A field of unclear grays and blacks served as background, with what appeared to be an abandoned subway vehicle off to one side. “You have news?”

“We tracked her last signal not far from here,” Carson reported, handsome face smug with anticipated success. “Found debris from an earpiece, identified as hers by the serial number on the chip. Looks like Miss Fitzpatrick put up quite the fight, but was ultimately taken. Outnumbered, most like.”

Pride warred with disappointment. “So she didn't just disappear—she's a hostage.”

“By the Underground, sir.”

“I want these people stopped, Agent.” Julien pressed his palm against the padding and bandages against his chest for emphasis.

Carson gave him a curt, professional nod. “Understood, sir. Their warren has been evacuated recently, just a matter of hours. They know we're after them, which leads me to believe they know exactly who they have.”

“We still have Nearly Nick in custody?”

Another sharp nod. “Would you like him interrogated again, sir?”

“Yes. As hard as possible.”

Chapter Six

Nearly Nick Santos swayed drunkenly in a dented metal folding chair, remaining upright only because he was tied viciously in place, the rope cutting deep into the soft tissue of his limbs. He no longer had any perception of day or night. His meals arrived at irregular intervals, and just when he finally stepped on the brink of sleep, floodlights filled his cement cell with their unholy light, burning his retinas even with his eyes clamped shut. It felt like days since he'd last had a sip of the fetid quarry water they'd been feeding him.

He was a dead man. He knew it, accepted it. Now he just wanted it over with.

The door rolled open, the sound prompting his head to snap painfully upright. Blood rushed from his brain, making him dizzy and nauseous. He startled like a wounded animal when a single light flickered on, the door slamming shut once more.

“Hello, Nicholas.”

Nick peered through the careful cracks of his eyelids, lashes creating little screen doors over his vision. He cracked them open a fraction more.

The tallest, coolest drink of water he'd ever seen greeted his parchment-dry eyes. She wore a trim, navy pinstriped skirt an inch or so above the knee, a crisp white Oxford men's dress shirt tailored for a woman, and killer navy stilettos with a series of thin buckled straps up the ankle. Silver cufflinks—Tiffany, if he were any judge—winked at her wrists as she unscrewed the cap off a bottle of water. Her auburn hair was pinned up, leaving wisps of hair to frame her face. “Thirsty, are we?”

He could barely dredge enough air from his lungs to force the words past his enflamed throat. “Don't want nothin' from you,” he growled.

The woman appeared not to hear as she skimmed a drop of water from the bottle neck and flicked it in his direction. He could almost feel it, if he imagined hard enough. “Now, Nicholas. Is that any way to speak to the one person in a hundred-mile radius willing to spare your sorry self?”

“If you're going to kill me,” he croaked, “just do it.”

She clucked, as though disappointed in his performance. “You've put up a decent fight so far. Why give up now? Especially when I can make everything better.”

He tried to spit, and failed, instead erupting in a coughing fit. “Is this about the bitch who put me here? 'Cause I want nothing to do with her.”

She regarded him with bright blue eyes, clear as a summer sky. Then she lifted the bottle to her generous mouth, apparently changed her mind and lowered it again. Nick focused on the bottle, mouth slightly agape. “Do you know who I am, Nicholas?”

He opened his mouth to tell her he didn't give a demon's fart in Hell, and stopped. His mind, sluggish with trauma, suddenly made the connection. The necessary synapses fired, but only managed to confuse him. “Yes.” His bloated tongue, still registering the bottle of water in her hand, had difficulty forming the words. “Why?”

“Because I want you to do something for me, Nicholas. One teeny, tiny thing. And then this is all over. But the timing has to be perfect. Timing is everything. Can you do that for me?”

“What?” His eyes riveted once more to the water in her lovely hand.

“I want you to tell them where to find Tara. And I want you to be very, very specific.”

Nicholas stared at her, questioning whether he'd heard right. When he decided he had, he grinned like a shark.

Tara and Stephen huddled together in the rear of the subway car, sharing their two-seater bench with their packs. There was no light in the car, other than one or two oil lanterns swaying from the metal bars overhead. People's meager belongings crowded the aisles, while their owners jostled with the slow, rocking movements of the train. They swayed like trees in a gentle breeze as they played cards with their neighbors across the aisle, or traded small children to less weary laps. Stale, recirculated air did nothing to alleviate the stench of close-pressed, unwashed bodies. Hopeful talk of towns looking for refugees to infuse their populations and work forces provided a cozy, if monotonous, murmur throughout the slow-moving cabin. New Jersey, Connecticut and Vermont, even Boston suburbs or as far north as Maine—still a viable food source in that part of the country.

Stephen was covered in a tweed overcoat too large for him, a newsboy hat pulled low on his forehead. One arm curved protectively about Tara's shoulders, whose rough construction worker's jacket swamped her small frame, the hood up to conceal her face. She rested against Stephen's shoulder, her body tucked neatly at his side. His free hand slid into her overlong sleeve and cradled hers, his fingers smoothing across the dancing pulse in her wrist.

“I haven't been ill in a long time, Tara. Not since the night Gwen found us.”

Tara's head shifted, his voice drawing her out of her drowse. Her eyes were dull with weariness, lashes dry against her skin. She muffled a yawn against her sleeve and blinked up at him. “I know that, Stephen,” she replied, wondering where he was going with this.

“Then why do you still act as though I'm going to drift away at almost any moment?” There was no accusation in his voice, only a genuine need to know.

Tara considered the truth in his words, knowing he deserved an honest response. “I don't know,” she finally said, looking up into intense, intelligent green eyes. “I'm sorry. I don't mean to.”

His hand slipped from her sleeve so he could touch her cheek. The crowd and rocking forced them to bundle closer together for privacy's sake, their faces close to keep their voices within the intimate proximity of their head coverings. “I'm a complete man, Tara, healthy and whole. I know I don't possess Julien's obvious…vitality, but I'm educated, cultured, and—I'm told—not terribly difficult on the eyes.”

No, he didn't have Julien's shining golden charisma. But neither did he have Julien's capacity for greed or betrayal. Stephen possessed a beauty that was quite different, one not diminished when compared to Vincent Dante's would-be usurper.

She knew now that Julien's gilt was only a mask to hide the tarnished truth of him, like a gold-plated nickel watch going for a twenty on any street corner in the city. Stephen's gilt, though not as bright, shone all the more for being genuine. And if Julien hadn't been there to draw her focus, if she'd insisted on knowing Vincent's plans instead of making her own assumptions, she may have realized it sooner.

“I think,” she said slowly, as the glacier of Julien's actions filling her began to recede beneath Stephen's warmth, if only a little, “the thing that scares me most out of all of this—all the changes, the secrets, Julien and the future—is the fear of losing you. I can't bear the thought of it.”

They sat, motionless and silent, for some time, Stephen's warm, dry palm cupping her cold cheek. Then Stephen drew her closer still and brushed his lips against hers, seeking permission. Always the gentleman, her Stephen.

Her
Stephen.

The grain of his chocolate corduroys pressed into her palm as the fingers of her other hand grazed his lower jaw with the most tentative of touches. His breath caught, and he exhaled her name.
“Tara.”

The train lurched, tearing them apart. They came to a screeching, stunning stop.

Julien watched the surveillance video playing in a four-by-four square foot mockery of him over his marble office floor. Mockery, because none of his security force had been able locate his rogue guardian or her companion. His jaw ground heavily in frustration.

“Oh, she's good,” Agent Carson observed as they witnessed, for the third time, Tara and Stephen reappear in different outerwear in the midst of the teeming throng migrating west from the Bloody Square. He didn't bother disguising the admiration in his voice—there was no point.

“The Underground is
helping
them? Why?”

Carson shook his head and turned away from the feed to address his boss's furious heir. “Couldn't say—you don't suppose she knows something we don't? Maybe she doesn't know who to trust.”

Other than her precious Stephen, of course. He really must do something about that. “We have to stop her before she does something drastic,” he said out loud. “No sign of Gwen, then?”

Carson shook his head. “None, sir.”

Julien drummed his fingers on the heavy wood of his desk. “Do we have
any
idea where Tara might have ended up after this very entertaining charade?”

“None, si—”

Carson's eyes went blank with sudden inspiration. Julien schooled the impatience Tara had never quite mastered.

“The Refugee Train,” Carson said.

The very idea startled Julien into something like outright horror. “Tara's leaving the city? That makes no sense, Carson.”

Carson shrugged. “Perhaps not, sir. But they're heading for Union Square. Our last sighting is documented just a few blocks away before they disappeared altogether. It's at least worth a shot.”

Damn the man, but he was right. “All right. Stop the train.”

“We'll get them at the next station, Mr. Dante.”

A dozen security agents in military gear boarded the train, clearing each car in groups of three. Wide, bright beams of light swept each cabin as the agents consulted satellite photos on their tablets and compared them to each and every passenger, even the ones they weren't supposed to know about. A palpable patina of fear descended like the rapid fall of dominoes.

The agents shoved and waded their way through the mass of people and belongings, ignoring the figures squirming corkscrews in their seats, ignoring the whimpers of those they uncovered to get a good look at.

In a car toward the back, huddled together on a bench packed with belongings behind a partition, their quarry awaited discovery.

The lead agent quickly called off the search, murmuring into his earpiece. He then approached the couple with care, one booted foot in front of the other, slow but steady and making no sudden movements. He trained his flashlight on them, more and more confident of his find, respectful to the last. “Miss Fitzpatrick? Mr. Saint-John?”

They didn't respond, nor did they so much as flinch when the agent reached over and lifted the newsboy hat from Stephen's head.

Not
Stephen's head. Nor Tara. The petite girl with the hood of her construction jacket up against the cold blinked curiously at him, a stranger. He swore.

“Abort,” he said into his comm, nearly spitting the word out as an epitaph. “They're not here.”

Twenty minutes later, this proved to be true. Ten minutes after that, the agents were gone and the train once more under way.

Long before that, however, two figures
sans
packs and wearing completely different outerwear tiptoed lightly along the roof of the train, climbed stealthily down the back, and disappeared into tunnel shadows until the train was gone.

Julien's exquisite, chiseled jaw throbbed from being clenched, first from the anticipation of finding Tara at last, now from acute disappointment.

“Tell me, Carson.” His exaggerated calm tone suggested someone was ripe for firing in such a way as to put the
severe
in
severance package
. “What do you propose we do next?”

“Search the area they were last seen more thoroughly,” came the prompt, professional response. “And I'm not convinced they weren't on that train. We should search every nook and cranny of that station, sir.”

“And then?”

“Sir?”

Julien drummed his fingers on his desk with a muted, ominous thumping. “When they are not found after all your efforts? What then?”

“In my experience, sir, it's best we rule out the obvious first. If—”

“Not,”
Julien interrupted, “when it comes to Tara Fitzpatrick. Or Gwen, for that matter, and this debacle has her name written all over it.”

Carson's brow furrowed in confusion. “I don't understand, sir. What does Gwen have to do with any of this?”

The universe was nothing if not a comedian with a flair for timing. At that moment, Agent Carson received a call on his comm unit that changed everything.

“Well,” Carson said with a little smile that appreciated the irony. “I wouldn't presume to play ‘good news/bad news' with you, Mr. Dante, but it seems you were several steps ahead of me.”

Julien perked up. “Gwen showed up.”

“It seems so. Nick Santos finally talked—but it appears his all-too convenient divulgence came from her.”

Julien restrained himself from shooting to his feet, but only just. “She's leading us to Tara,” he said, thinking out loud. His next question was to Carson. “And just where did he say our girl is going to be, and when?”

“Liberty Island, tomorrow night.”

Julien's eyes had drifted shut, one likely possibility after another scrolling fast in a mental slideshow. Agent Carson's answer, however, made them spring open again. “Why—”

He stopped, breath frozen. He could imagine the restored statue, clear as day, only the torch to be completed. Vincent had characteristically fussed over Stephen's concept drawings and schematics, wanting the new torch to be perfect. He recalled Vincent's taunt, rejoicing that Tara had been trained to beat Julien, not help him.

What if the torch was finished? What if Vincent and Gwen had planned the unveiling event, conveniently leaving Tara and himself out of the proverbial loop?

What if he and Tara and been purposely set against one another—and the unveiling was supposed to serve as stage for Julien's very public humiliation?

He considered, briefly, not showing up, ruining all of Vincent's grand schemes in one fell swoop.

But why should he? He'd sparred with Tara plenty of times over the years. She was good. He was much, much better. Not even Gwen stood much of a chance against him, brilliant as she was. Besides, she wouldn't interfere. This was Tara's fight, and she'd let the girl destroy herself against him to the point of no return.